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Comparing New vs Refubished Printers?
GraWil asks: "Does anyone have advice on purchasing a color laser printer? I'm trying to decide between getting a new small 'personal' color laser or a used/refurbished workhorse. For the roughly the same money, I can either buy a Xerox 6100 or a refurbished Tektronix 740/750 or even a tabloid sized 790. I've had mixed luck with color HP and Lexmark printers but I'm open to any suggestions at this point. There are a fair number of reviews but none of them ever compare new with the old."
A new printer is great, but a refubished printer, well those just don't exist.
Ah, you found me!
Besides the technical differences one of the things you may want to do is check toner costs. Our department has a Lexmark High Output color printer and a full set of toner for all the colors costs about $1000. Happily we haven't had to replace them yet, but the bigger printer may prove itself to be much more expensive.
on (among other things):
What do you want it for?
How long does it need to last?
How much are you willing to pay for disposables?
(mainly ink & paper)
Interface? USB vs. lpt vs. Ethernet?
I print about 40-100 pages per day. I'm an avid reader and print out things to read on the bus as I don't want to show off my laptop to early morning bums.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I actually design printer firmware for a living (although I do inkjets), so take that as a bias. But from a technical perspective, anything refurbished that I didn't know the age and use model of would scare me.
Printers have a fixed lifespan. Gears grind down, aerosol builds up, capacitors burn out, internal memory has limited write cycles. Generally, a printer is rated for x number of pages. A cheap 50 buck one is maybe 10-15K, a 120 would give you 30K+. There's a large difference between a refurbished printer that someone used once a day for 3 years, and one someone printed 5-10 pages a day on (and as much as it surprised me, some people do print more than that). The second will have a high chance of breaking in the next 3 years, the first probably won't. Of course, this data is for inkjets so multiple by a factor of 3 to get better numbers.
I'm not saying that refurbished can't work. But with the price of lasers still fairly high, I think you get a better deal buying a new one rather than risking it breaking early.
Also, make sure to look into cost per page. Thats the cost of toner, divided by the number of pages printed per cartridge. This differs vastly between printers, and for heavy users can dwarf unit cost.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The Phasers look like a good idea, but they're really not.
The 750/740's are the worst of them.
They weigh something like 100lbs. They only print 8.5x11" or smaller. They don't take many different types of paper well, like cardstock. The ink rubs off the paper if folded, scratched, or smeared. The ink comes off in fax machines and on copier glass. Certain colors look really bad.
They have a really long warm up time. Every time it cools down/warms up they eat a TON of ink. The black ink is free (all you pay is shipping), but the color ink is about $100 a box, and it doesn't last that long. They're also not that fast. 2-3 pages per minute. First page can take a couple minutes to print.
When we first got the printer, only one person could print to it at a time. If anyone 'barged in', it would puke. It took over a year for a new driver to fix this issue.
Outsource your printing. If you're not a big enough operation where you can lease a machine like a Canon ImageRunner 3200, don't bother.
...with refurbished items that makes them shy away from them? I mean that in a general sense, of course. I don't have anything to add to this particular discussion, but I'm hoping this particular question brings up interesting points that the person asking this question will find interesting.
"Derp de derp."
I wrote a comment on PS a little while ago in the "printing on Linux" article.
Also, given the choice, get a printer with a built in network server (you know, ethernet). If you have a desktop, it might not seem important. But since I've gotten more computers and started to use my laptop as my main computer, having the printer seperate from any computer is great. I don't have to keep one computer on. Even if I only had a laptop, I could plug the printer into my network and print from anywhere in the house thanks to WiFi. I can keep my printer next to my computer, in the basement where my cable modem is, in a bedroom that has an ethernet jack, or in a bathroom (if I added a ethernet jack). And with a little ethernet->wireless adaptor, I could put the printer in the attic if I wanted. It's actually very handy.
Also, as a /. special, if you have both ethernet and PS on your printer, it's AMAZINGLY easy to configure with Linux, Windows, or OS X. Windows is a little weird (a network printer that's not attached to a computer is considered "local" when adding a printer. Huh?). But no messing with GhostScript or anything under Linux. The printer already speaks PS, and if it's like mine ACTUALLY RUNS LPD, so you just forward jobs.
I hope others can help you better with the which is best, as I said I've no experiance with color lasers, but PS and ethernet are fantastic features that you should be looking for.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
IMHO, the thing to compare when deciding new vs. refurbished is warranty.
For example, when I was last shopping for a laser printer (several years ago now), Panasonic was the only manufacturer who offered the same warranty for refurbished printers as for new printers (in my price range with my desired features) while the others had warranties between 30 and 90 days on refurbished printers.
While I normally wouldn't purchase extended warranty plans, the one case when they are worthwhile is if you can buy refurbished and get a warranty that matches (or beats) the new product and still have a significant savings.
If the warranty is the same, I see no reason not to buy refurbished (and no advantage to buying the new model). OTOH, even though I'm an extreme bargain-hunter, I wouldn't buy a refurbished printer with less than a one-year warranty.
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I bought one about six months ago, and have used it to print out photographs, web pages, and documents. I've probably printed about 200 8x10s out of it and it has a page count now of a bit over 3,000 pages. The Cyan cartridge is going to run out in about 200 pages, but all the other cartridges are just a shade under half full. I happen to print out a lot of green text, so this is perfectly understandable.
:-(.
I work for a company that remanufacturers toner cartridges. One major disadvantage of buying a new model printer is that if your company doesn't make cartridges for your printer, it won't be able to give you free ones
That being said, since remanufacturered toner cartridges are a big help to anyone on a budget, you should bear this in mind when considering what to buy. I'd give the nod to HP because with the highest market share they also have a bigger remanufacturing industry. Lexmark has a lawsuit going that is trying to prevent remanufacturing entirely for copyright issues. As a result, I would strongly recommend going with HP if you want a shot at cheaper cartridges.
I've had many conversations with the guy who runs the factory about what to buy. I said "Gee, used color LaserJet 4500s are getting pretty cheap, maybe I should buy one". He talked me out of it saying there are all sorts of problems with those old printers, and the technology is much better refined in newer models. His opinion is that anything older than the 4600 is not worth getting, and he's not doing that to try to sell cartridges since at the time we made cartridges for the 4500 not the 4600.
I think his advice was sound, since I like the quality of the 3500 quite a bit better than what I've seen of the 4500.
Color lasers do not print as beautiful photographs as inkjets do, and you should be aware of this. At the same time, it might cost you $0.50 a page to saturate a laser-printed image with ink, while it costs about $2 a page (including special $0.50 a page ink) to print your photos on a typical colour inkjet. My actual printing cost has been a hair under $ 0.10 a page including a good mix of text and photographs.
Judging by the listings on eBay, you will get a Color LaserJet 4500 for about $450 or so but it may not include the toner cartridges, or it may include used-up ones. You're still going to have to buy about $400 to fill it up. That seems to imply that you're not spending much more to get a brand new 3500 with brand new full-life toner cartridges. I paid $999 for my 3500N (with the networking). Since the new cartridges are $130 each just about everywhere, that means most of the value is in the cartridges, not the printer!
Looks like my six months of printing has cost me around $54 a month for around 500 pages. Not bad considering how much I've used it.
In conclusion, I've been extremely pleased by my Color LaserJet. The photos aren't perfect, but nobody who has looked at them has complained. And the text printing is, as the C|Net review says, darn near perfect. I can say that printing in colour is downright addictive and I would never want to go back to the spattery inkjet or the boring monochrome LaserJet.
Hope this helps.
D
Inspect it carefully, make sure you can see it working, have it checked out by a qualified mechanic, and just accept the fact that you're going to be completely fucked when it breaks down in a week.
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Very recently, I bought a used printer on ebay. I got a real steal ($300 for an HP Color LaserJet 4550)...
:)
But, I'd been looking off and on for a long time. Make sure you look at the cost to run, and how much expected lifetime it has left in it.
Mine has 19,000 pages printed total, and the printer is rated for 35,000 / month, so that's pretty good
But, of course, you don't get any warranty coverage or anything.
On mine, it might be the case that the alignment is off or something. I don't know if that's possible with laser printers. There might (I can't tell for certain, it might just be in my head) be a tiny cyan tinge to the left of colored areas that shouldn't have it.
I bought a used HP LaserJet 4050N from a seller on eBay who specializes in reselling HP LaserJets and SGI workstations. For ~$250, I got a PCL + Postscript laser printer with a rockin' built-in print server (Win/Classic Mac/Unix-LPR/even ftp to the print queue!). I don't recall the published PPM rate, but it spits out a page every couple seconds. I think the page count was 74,000 when I bought it, yet it looks and works as though it was brand new. I think the duty cycle rating for this beast is 65,000 pages / month.
I actually design printer firmware for a living... internal memory has limited write cycles.
Care to expound?
If you KNOW what you are getting into.
I refurbish laserjets all the time.
I acquired three HP 4500n's and am very pleased with them. One was dropped and is parts only, one has minor problems and I'll get around to it one of these days, and one works great, I use it several times a week. I had to disassemble it completely and clean it up and do some minor repairs but it's great.
Only thing that scares me is what they refer to as "The consumables" and I don't mean toner..
There are a lot of user replaceable components in the 4500 that have a limited lifespan. And the price of those "consumables" is HIGH... One replacement part could cost as much as an entire used printer on ebay would cost.
Other brands may have similar practices, I don't know, I only do HP.. But be aware of it.
I also refill the toner carts myself. I have a large supply of color toner stockpiled and I'm covered for the next 20 years there..
One other thing to be aware of.
The NEW laserjets are all made in China and they are CHEAPLY MADE.. The frames are made of plastic or of very low grade Chinese steel that bends and warps very easily. They are NOT designed and built to last for years of heavy use, they are designed and built to fall apart after a year or two so you have to buy expensive parts or just buy a whole new printer.
The OLDER refurbished printers are usually made in the US with Japanese made engines are are much more sturdy, designed and built to take serious, heavy use and abuse. I have a lot of Laserjet III's and IIISI's that are in perfectly good working order and will give many more years of use because they were designed and built to last.
I'll take OLD refurbished stuff over new stuff just about everytime...
We just purchased a Xerox Phaser 6100 (note: the Phaser line of printers used to be owned by Tektronix, and was purchased by Xerox - actually, Tektronix was purchased by Xerox). Anyway, the 6100 is a decent printer for a moderate amount of usage. We are setting up a new laboratory with perhaps 4-6 people in it, so printing is not going to be a huge demand. We do require a reasonably high-quality laserjet, due to printing of color graphs, charts, and molecular models. The 6100 is of sufficient quality (600 dpi / 1200 dpi enhanced), such that it will create a good professional quality image. Although printing on a high quality paper will produce a much higher quality image. By comparison, the previous lab that I was at used a Tektronix (Xerox) Phaser 780, is of notably higher (1200 dpi standard) print quality. This would not only do tabloid printing (which the 6100 won't do), but it is also much sharper (looking at a printout on plain paper looks like you've used some type of special paper!). However, the Tek Phaser 780 we had was also used HEAVILY. After only 2 - 2 1/2 years of heavy usage, we were spending a significant chunk of money just keeping it operational. So I would be very cautious if purchasing a used printer. Overall, I've found the 6100 very easy to use and will meet our needs quite well! There are drivers for windows, mac, linux, and it set up very easily on our network. We didn't need tabloid printing, so that wasn't an issue this time,...
At work we bought a pallet of 18 HP LaserJets off Ebay for $600; 4s and 4 pluses. What fabulous machines for B+W text printing. We beat them like a rented mule and they just keep cranking out the paper. Local, Jet Direct cards or hung off port 9100 on LTSP clients, there's nothing these things can't do for fractions of a penny per page. Except print color.